


Dysfunction Is Still a Form of Function

by LyingTurtle



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Dirty Talk, Dubious Consent, Humiliation, M/M, Violent Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-08-14 00:40:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7992199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyingTurtle/pseuds/LyingTurtle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel Jacobi doesn't just roll over and take it from anyone.  But he's never considered Kepler to be just anyone.</p><p>In which Jacobi and Kepler walk a thin line between the roles they fill for each other and the only way they know how to work is badly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Leave Things Cleaner Than How You Found It

**Author's Note:**

> Was supposed to be writing an anatomy paper, this happened instead. Might take this farther but don't know how far yet.

There’s this  _ look _ he gets when you know it’s about to happen.

Kepler storms out of Mr. Cutter’s office, his eyes narrowed and dark, shoulders tense and on edge, a lock in his jaw as he attempts to keep the better of his emotions under control.  You don’t know what goes on in those meetings that gets him like this, but you know the outcome for you is always the same.

“Jacobi” is all he says, low and more like a growl than anything.

“On it” you reply quicker than necessary, getting up and following him out.  Maxwell pretends she doesn’t pay attention and try and pry out what is happening.  She likes her disassociated appearance too much to show genuine interest in something other than robots.

Kepler leads you somewhere different every time it seems.  Unlocked storage closet, just emptied meeting room, even an unlocked car once that was definitely  _ not _ his.  It doesn’t matter where you end up though, the moments leading up are always the same.

This time it’s an office with the name “Debra Ramos” on it and you can’t help but feel a little bad for it as you’re shoved backwards onto her desk, sending a stapler crashing to the floor by accident.  Kepler looks at it briefly before he turns his glare back up to you, something contempt enough to send shivers up your spine.

“I think you’ll be picking that up now, Mr. Jacobi” you cock your head a little, a thin challenging smile on your lips as you start to lean up and reach over.  He puts a hand on your shoulder to stop you, “Oh no, not with your hands”

It’s not even ten minutes before you’re leaned over on the floor, gripping the sharp tasting metal handle of the stapler with your teeth to try and cover up your moans and pants as Kepler seemingly tries to fuck you hard enough that you fall over.  Your nose is pressed to the floor and your knees are aching from where they are rocking back and forth with the force of his thrusts.  He’s got both your arms gripped behind you, his nails sinking into your skin in a way that he could definitely  _ not be _ but he does it anyways.  You think he likes the marks he makes, it’s the closest thing to beating the shit out of you, and this one satisfies a lot more of his needs to psychologically torment someone.

“Why now I think you’ve made a mess of Ms. Ramos’ property” he chides casually, making a 'tsk' sound with his teeth.  You want to roll your eyes but you don’t have that much control over your facial expressions when he leans over you to suck a bruise onto the back of your neck.  He’s on you more and that means he’s deeper in you which brings a whole new vocabulary of groans into your throat.  He grabs you by the hair and lifts your head up painfully, leaving a trail of saliva off your lip.  “Tongue out, Jacobi” he growls in your ear.  You almost finish then and there but he’s been careful not to give you  _ too _ much pleasure along with all the pain.

You open your mouth and aren’t prepared for him to drag his finger along your leaking cock and then smear it on your tongue.  You flinch back, your mouth trying to snap shut but he’s faster.  “Nuh uh” he whispers with almost a twinge of laugh in his voice.  He’s got his nail digging into your tongue and it hurts like fuck.  Your attempts to move away from it get your face planted to the floor, the coppery taste of blood in your mouth as your whole body shivers from the discomfort and consistent throbbing pain.

You had different ways you rated pain.  In order: explosion burn, gunshot wound, non-lethal spaceship crash, and  _ Warren Kepler _ .  Right now Warren Kepler was going for a solid level of ‘living up to his name’ because there were few people who could fuck you near senseless while making you pulsate in pain.

“Now” Kepler breathed out casually, catching his breath while taking his finger from your mouth and slowing his pace to something slow and deliberate.  “Let’s try that again, shall we?” you catch your breath and pull your face off the floor and swallow down the bit of blood still lingering.  You take a deep breath, focusing yourself.  If your erection wasn’t throbbing painfully between your legs you would punch him in the face and walk out.

Oh who were you kidding.  You’d let him fuck you anytime, just like you had been for the last few months.

“I asked you a question?” Kepler reminded you.  You swallow down your pride and put on your most ‘I’m not on the verge of screaming like a cheap whore’ voice.

“Yes,  _ sir _ ?”

“Are we ready to try this again?”

“ _ Yes _ ”

“Good.  Now put your tongue out for me” he runs a hand down your side and slides it down to your cock, giving you a good stroke that helps balance out the pain.  You open your mouth in a way that’s still comfortable, knowing he’s probably going to keep you like that for awhile.  “I’m glad you finally learned your place” you can practically see the demeaning smile on his face it’s so heavy in his voice.

He grips you by the hair again and glides you down to the handle of the stapler, running your tongue up it and licking up the cold saliva still on it.  It was disgusting, no way around it.  You swear you weren’t like this with any of the other people you had slept with.  Not like you had slept with anyone since Kepler started his impromptu rough fucking sessions started, but still, it wasn’t like you.  It was just that you either played it Kepler’s way, or the hard way.  You could walk away at any time, but if you wanted to play, it wasn’t the sort of thing where you could do aftercare critiques.

“You like being used like this?” Kepler growled, his thrusts becoming more erratic.  This was the part where it got real, everything else could be considered gentle up until this part.  “Should I have you clean the floor while you’re down there?” his hand is on your cock now and he’s furiously pumping you to the point where you know you won’t hold out long.  “I wish I had you in Cutter’s office earlier, think you’d like me to share you with him or just make you stare him down while I humiliate you?” that one definitely struck a cord with you.  Not so much being fucked in front of your boss, that you could do without.  But the fact that someone would see Kepler claim you.  That small bit of connection, not out of love or fidelity, but just of the simple act of lustful possession.

You let out a low groan and try and keep yourself together but it’s becoming increasingly impossible to do.

“Sir, I’m-” you breathe, licking your lips as you started to pant, his hand working too effectively on your cock and your twitching hips only encouraging him to fuck you more mercilessly.

“What?  You like the idea of me disciplining you?  Are you so desperate to get fucked you’ll just take punishment without complaining?  I think there’s something wrong with you Daniel, I think you’ll stay here and let me do what I want even when there’s nothing in it for you” there is something terribly wrong with you, and it absolutely has everything to do with him.  You should have sensed the warning in those words and the way he let you get one of your arms back so you could get some sort of leverage to hold yourself up as he jerked you until you came on your own knees and on the floor.

It feels like your whole body has been thrown into one of your explosions.  One big white hot mess that destroys everything it touches in a blinding light that vibrates every cell of your body with the aftershocks.  You barely register the fact that you’re being far too loud.  You also don’t realize the new problem is that Kepler hasn’t stopped fucking you or taken his hand off your spent cock.  There’s a small dark laugh that means nothing good for you.

The pleasure turns to a sharp prick of over stimulation very quickly, and in that one second you’re thrown from pleasured moans to desperate cries.

“S- Sto” you cough out, nails scratching down the linoleum of the floor as your body is wracked with spasms you can only compare to having a conscious seizure.

“You’re free to pull your other arm out and get away, but just know I haven’t finished Jacobi” the noise is being caught and sputtered in your throat as you screw your face up from the abuse your body is taking.  Kepler let’s go of your other arm and you put it down beside you.  You could get up and he would stop.  You could get up, walk away, never come back.  You could even get up and blow him to finish him off, but you know you wouldn’t, and so did he.  The worst of his games in your opinion, the one where the two of you both know you’d subjugate yourself and writhe for him because he  _ liked _ it and you wanted him to  _ like _ you.

He leans over you again, knowing you’ll stay down for him.  He’s kissing your neck, he’s whispering how good you are in your ear, he’s spoiling you and you’re  _ loving _ it.  He wraps a hand around your mouth now to keep you quiet enough as he breathes heavier, reaching his own orgasm.  He cums in you, he presses himself up inside you and you feel the sticky wetness gather up.  He keeps himself in until he goes soft and then pulls out.

You move for what feels like the first time in ages, every part of your body screaming in pain and abuse.  All you can manage to do is roll onto your back and breathe as Kepler gets himself together, not hesitating to end the moment and get back to normal.  He’s not the kind of man to linger on anything.

“She’s already gone home for the day, you won’t be disturbed” is all he says, his voice short and contempt like usual.  Somehow he slips out the door without opening it even an inch wider than necessary.  How charming.

You lay your head back and blow out a slow sigh.  You’ve really got to stop doing this.  You know it won’t make a difference though, you do say it every time afterall.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which they actually do work! Kinda. A little bit. They aren't perfect and also Cutter's a bitch.

“Fuck!” you hiss, your back hitting the far wall in the closet, blood draining from a bad scratch on your arm.  There’s no time to reassess it, you hear footsteps rushing towards you and you have just enough time to plant your foot on the door and brace the assault against it.  The body on the other side moves off, getting his bearings again, the bastard.

Deep breath.  Keep moving.

You fish out the bullets from the strap on your belt and open the gun up, only to see a dented round already in the barrel.  Shit, it’s jammed.  Don’t panic, count it out.  The footsteps take you off guard this time and you swing your leg up so fast to brace it that you can feel the little shocks of stretch and damage shooting through your leg.  That wasn’t going to be fun to deal with.

There’s a glass window breaking from somewhere upstairs and you can only hope it’s not your guy that’s going through it.  The sound distracts your guy long enough for you to come up with a plan.  You rip off the bullet case from your belt and toss it and the bullets into the coat pocket of some nice fur hanging up on  the rack.  There was a certain part of you that couldn’t stop from imagining Kepler in the gaudy thing that and brought a bit of a laugh to your lips as the door burst open.

The man is taller than you, built like a fucking racehorse, and is bleeding from a severe head wound that would give the most badass scar if he managed to live beyond the day.  He clocks you in the face against your plan.  Keeling over, your hands go above your head to protect it.  He grabs the gun from your hand and you look up just in time to see him put it in your face.  Deep breath, trust your work.

“Die you sick  _ fuck _ ” the man spits, which was more than a little bit unnecessary in your opinion.  He pulls the trigger and there is only the sharp ringing of inner ear damage available to you.  You open your eyes, time working only in increments of your breath.  There’s blood on your lips, it stings the inner crease of your eye, it’s all your nose can pick up on.  There’s brain on the wall opposite to you from where the gun exploded in his face.

You put a hand to your arm and feel several small punctures.  Shrapnel, shit.  You’ll need to be careful how you use the arm until it’s out so you don’t cut anything up.  Also find painkillers, you’re going to need to find a  _ lot _ of painkillers.

“Jacobi!” you hear Kepler scream, sounding a couple miles away with your hearing loss.  He’s frantic and, well, pissed.  Like a storm he’s kicking aside the door and then he’s got his hands on you.  He touches your shrapnel arm and you wince up so he avoids it.  Your head is turned left and right, his hand runs through your hair as he searches for any kind of head wound.  His assessment isn’t loving, it’s rough and quick, just the vitals being checked before he can haul you out and get you back on track.

Your eyes go over his shoulder, across the living room, and into the porch outside through the glass door.  In a flash you grab his gun from off his belt.  In the same moment that you aim he grabs you by the throat and pushes you against the wall.  No time to waste.  You fire it off beside his head.  One, two, three, four- clunk.  Flick the safety on, drop the murder weapon.  Kepler turns around to see broken glass and a gunman seizing on the ground with blood spurting from his chest.

“You thought I’d kill you?” you smile, his face isn’t responsive but you know his eyes are smiling too.  He releases you and picks his gun up, shaking his head off and getting his bearings while he walks out, doing a sweep of the perimeter.  You’re left alone to look down at the man you were a little less guilty about killing than the other guy.

“Sick fuck” you mutter, stepping over him and getting your gun and bullets out of the coat.  You close the closet behind you and load up the gun, removing the bits of debris that would lead you down a similar fate.  Firearms may not be your strong suit, but making things exploded proves time and time again to be the best weapon in your arsenal.

“Clear!” Kepler calls from the front door, letting it swing open since you two had broken the handle off while breaking in.  It was a nice door, all solid oak with a rich finish.  Hell, it was a nice  _ house _ .  Why it was that the rich bastard they just took out had to have such nice taste but still put it in the middle of a forest alone where no one could hear the firefight that just went down was in poor planning.  You would never live far away from people, you wanted at least twenty around at all times to make sure they witness when the company finally wanted you gone.

“This could have gone better” you admit, both arms beginning to pulse with pain and abuse.  Kepler puts his gun back into its holster on his belt, looking around at the mess.

“It would have if somebody had managed to not get caught while planting explosives”

“Oh and so I was responsible for the fact that we didn’t know they had a fucking  _ heat vision goggles _ ” Kepler rolls his eyes and you just shake your head.  “You hurt?” you mutter.

“No” you look down and see a gash on his leg that’s bleeding.  You look up and meet his eyes, “Okay a little.  You’re worse though.  I’m going to move the bodies outside, find out what’s your blood and what isn’t” with that he starts off, getting things settled up.

The layout is fairly simple even if it is ridiculously nice.  The stairs are towards the edge of the living room and so you start up, looking about the parlor bar set up.  There’s a guest bathroom but why use that when the master bath is supposed to be lined with Brazilian granite?  So you hobble into the master bedroom, finding the target laying in the doorway in just an awkward enough position to where you have to step over the body to get through.  The bed was still made though and you appreciate that nothing got on it’s ridiculous thread count.  You would eventually get to watch it go up in flames but not until you’ve had a nice crack at it.

The bathroom is amazing as you thought it’d be.  There’s a large bathtub lined with a sheer hydrophobic curtain like a canopy around it so the infinity shower head could be put on the ceiling.

“Awesome” you mutter to yourself, appreciating the display.  With no small amount of pain you try and lift the shirt off your head but find it easier to just tear it in half and get it off your body.  It goes in the trash and you hop onto the countertop to get a closer look in the mirror at the arm problem.  The shrapnel isn’t deep but it hurts like a bitch.  Maybe that’s something you should thank Kepler for, he’s given your pain tolerance a drastic increase as of late.

There’s some tweezers in the drawer and you’re peeling back skin to pull out the shards.  When your arm has a hefty stream of blood oozing down onto the counter you decide it’s finally enough and strip down the rest of the way to get into the shower.  The water is a glorious spray that hits your skin like acid, making you grit your teeth and bear through it as the red runs off your body and down the drain.

The steam hasn’t fully taken over the mirror when Kepler comes into the bathroom and strips off his clothes, dumping them on the same pile as your useless one’s.  You hold your breath as he gets into the shower along beside you, wondering if this would be the time where you had to call off any sadistic game of his to spare yourself from passing out in pain and blood loss.  But he just moves you aside to get under the spray more, rinsing his arms and hair furiously to get all the viscera off fully.  There are very few times you really get to  _ look _ at Kepler.  He doesn’t take well to being analyzed, even when you’re having sex.  He’s chiseled down deliciously, his jaw sharp and eyes focused and narrowed.  He’s what you imagine every curious boy’s military fantasy guy would look like.

“Feeling better?” he asks, his voice low and heavy in a way that gives you an idea of what’s going to happen.

“Loads” you feel like shit but not enough to pass this up.  It’s not long before you’re got both your hands planted on the wall, bracing as curses try and fly from your lips, his hands on his hips bringing you flat against him over and over.  Your legs are shaking but it’s not from weakness.

He didn’t have to hurt you now.  With the images of what the two of you had just done still fresh in your mind, there really wasn’t anything he felt like doing to you.  He killed people.  You killed people.  You were fucking in the shower of the prick you just murdered for christ’s sake, there wasn’t much more that needed to be added to the mix.  It’s times like this when you really wonder what’s going on in his head.  There’s this strange sense of normality in what you do.  If you pretended hard enough you could imagine yourselves as just having a random affair between partners, not something that had to be balanced in blood.

His thrusts slow down but are deeper and he brings his whole body against you when he does it.  He asks you how much you like this, you answer him in moans.  Then his voice gets lower, more serious if that was even possible.  He asks you how many people you killed today and your blood shoots cold.  You try and refrain from answering but one of his hands stills yours on your dick and starts gripping tighter, threatening to turn this little encounter into one of your more usual caliber.

You cough out the number and he resumes without hesitation.  Your fantasy is broken, you’re back to just fucking in a dead guy’s shower.  It’s not long till he makes you finish along with him.  Once you’re both showered and clean of the shower activity, you’re rooting through the rich guy’s drawers while Kepler is drying off, sitting on the edge of the bed.  The body has been moved from the doorway but there’s still the unseemly mess left behind as a reminder.

“How long will it take you to set up the fire?” he asks, clicking open a first aid box from the black duffel bag he had thrown into the room.  He’s inspecting the cut on his leg and comparing small bottles of ointment in the box.

“Not long.  About five minutes to set up, a solid ten to twenty to burn away completely depending on the weather” you grab black slacks and an almost silky navy button down shirt along with a black belt.  With a turn and a toss you’ve gotten them to land beside your partner on the bed.  He looks over at it briefly and decides it’s not horrific enough to protest.  You thank your lucky stars the guy was relatively fit and organized enough to keep all his belongings in order.

There’s jeans and a white button down that look around your size so you throw it on.  The pants come easy but doing up the buttons with your arms feeling like bricks of concrete was anything but comfortable.

“Leave it off” Kepler sighs.  You raise an eyebrow to ask if this meant round two was underway but he shook his head, “We need to get the shrapnel out of your arm.  Also by the way, relying on a jammed gun?   _ Really? _ ”

You shove the drawer shut harder than necessary and stride over towards him, shrugging off the shirt you tried very hard not to get blood on.

“I inspected the chamber, it definitely wouldn’t have fired”

“But that didn’t mean it would have exploded.  It could easily have just not gone off and then he would have beat you over the head with it” you try and shrug but it makes you wince.

“Desperate times call-”

“For better planning” he holds your gaze and you know there’s no sense in arguing.  “Kneel” there’s a small hint of satisfaction in his voice at the command.  You try not to smirk as you lower yourself down before him.  Rustling in the first aid box, he doesn’t give you any warning before he jabs you in the arm with a small EpiPen looking device.  “Pain killer” he explains without prompting.  You flex your arm, already feeling like half of it is encased in ice.  With that out of the way, he’s got tweezers in one hand and gauze in the other as he sets to work about your injury.

After no small amount of time, there’s a small pile of metal bits in a bag along with a large wad of bloody gauze and band aid strips all tucked into a plastic bag which is chucked into a far trashcan with an expert overhand.

“I’d ask if you played basketball but I think we both know how good you are at teamwork” he grips your cheek with his hand and gives you a rough shake.

“I’d ask if you were popular but I think we both know how good you are at  _ not _ pissing people off” his hands are off you now and that’s a little upsetting.  You put your hands on both his knees, daring to glance up at him.  He couldn’t expect you to be on your knees in front of him this long and not have something come of it.  He looks at you, gauging whether or not he wants to go through with something you have a hand in initiating.  Then he makes a big show of looking at his watch, going so far as to roll  _ both _ his sleeves up to do so.  He gives it a good appraisal and then looks back down at you and leans back on his elbows to get nice and comfy.  “I suppose if you knew how to use that mouth of yours though, then people might find some use of keeping you around” your mouth is already working over his inner thigh, trying not to dampen the cloth too heavily with your tongue.

“I wonder if you started trying things out in high school.  Maybe you were a late bloomer and waited until college” you blame the fact that he’s talkative on the circumstance that he preoccupied isn’t panting and biting you.  You dig your fingers in deep as you drag them up his thighs, grabbing onto the belt and undoing it quicker than he put it on.  “I think you started with girls.  You probably were charming to them and were never single for very long” you’re scooting closer to the bed so you can lean in farther and suck marks onto his abdomen while you work down his clothes over his growing erection.  “I think you put yourself in places where guys would come to you so you wouldn’t have to seek them out.  A nightclub bathroom, probably more than a couple bar parking lots.  You’d always be drunk, something to give you an excuse” you take his cock in your hand and relish in the way he hisses while you run your mouth up the shaft.  You roll your lips over the head and then finally push down to take him in.  The stretch of silence is glorious as you finally get him to shut up and stop analyzing your sex life.  You swallow him down, breathing out your nose as you keep your pace very slow but tense.  There’s the beginning of a curse on his lips and it goes straight to your ego.  You’re sucking lightly as you pull up, flattening your tongue against it as you go.  He runs his hand through your hair, only to grip it hard and force you down a second later.  You’d be lying if you said you weren’t waiting for him to do that though.

He’s leaning up fully now, almost leaning over you as he bobs your head.  “ _ Fuck _ , Jacobi.  You make me think I shouldn’t have waited around for Cutter to instigate-” your eyes flash open and you pull yourself off as quick as possible, feeling like a complete idiot suddenly.  Kepler is completely caught off guard, not sure if this is part of the game or if you’ve finally jumped off the deep end.

“Do you fucking  _ hear _ that!” you yell, on your feet in a flash and storming out of the room to take to the steps as fast as possible.  God how could you be so  _ stupid _ .  You hear Kepler fumbling with his belt hurriedly upstairs so he could get up and follow you done at a slightly slower pace hence the leg.

You’re already taking the living room in strides to where the large section of windows are.  A storm that somehow came about without either of you noticing now dumped load after load of saturating water over the pile of bodies in the back.

“Jacobi please for the love of god say something that  _ doesn’t _ give me a reason to shoot you right now” Kepler growls, tucking the edges of his shirt into his pants as he comes up beside you.

“Dammit when did it start fucking raining!?”

“Who the hell cares!”

“Warren we cannot burn wet bodies!  The whole mission to kill everyone inside, burn the bodies till there’s no matter left, and blow up the house along with them all rests on us being able to  _ burn _ them!” he gets the picture very suddenly because there’s the look of ‘oh fuck I have to call Cutter’ written all over his face.

“There’s a tarp in the back of the car” he snaps and like clockwork you’re both outside in the pouring rain and lightning, dragging the tarp out and tracking through the yard trying to move corpses and tie down a tarp that doesn’t want to negotiate.  All heat of the situation at hand lost as the two of you battle nature to save your lives from yoru very easily disappointed boss.  By the time you finally get the damn thing nailed down in a way that doesn’t end up just slipping out in the mud, you’re both soaked to the bone and pissed.  It took at least half an hour to finally get it all securely sealed down.

“So now we have to wait until the  _ fucking _ rain stops, right?” Kepler spat, pacing around in his predator sort of way.

“I mean unless you want to try burning them and have the chemicals just turn into a toxic gas that kills us both, yeah” you lean against the kitchen counter, rubbing your forehead with one hand.  How could you be so  _ stupid _ ?  How had you wasted so much time- oh right, you’ve spent about half your time fucking your partner while on the clock.  

“Well, this is great!” Kepler throws his cellphone out of his pocket and onto the coffee table, “Now we get to call Cutter”


	3. Effective Communication

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team building is an important part to any partnership.

You’re stacking logs in the fireplace, hoping there’s a half decent lighter somewhere in the expensive house.  The heat is on but it does very little to displace the chill settling into your bones.  Kepler hasn’t moved from where he sat in the arm chair, staring at the cellphone on the coffee table.  You haven’t got a clue what’s running through his head but you know better than to try and get in between him and his thoughts.

Wiping your hands clean of debris, you look around for a source of ignition only for a small, “Jacobi” to get your attention enough for you to turn and catch a small lighter being tossed to you.

“‘Preciate it” you mutter, setting about lighting the fire.  It was so much easier to get a flame going when there were several purified and highly volatile compounds tacked into the mix.  You think maybe if you could single out the component that gave Kepler’s stare such an electrically charged feeling, you’d have a much easier time of starting this stupid fire.  

Eventually, a small blue flicker turns into a stretching orange blossom.  The reaction sucking up air from the holes you left in your layout, the oxygen fueling the combustion, all the chemistry in just the right order for such a marvelous little thing to take place.  You remembered a long time ago your science teacher asked you what made something alive.  Your answer was that it had cells, which seemed like a pretty smart thing to say in middle school.  She then asked if there was anything that  _ wasn’t _ made of cells, to which you ignorantly forgot the topic of the lesson and responded no.  Fire is not made of cells, fire is not alive.

You glanced over at kepler against your better judgement.

Fire is not a way to live.

“Are you going to waste my lighter fluid and let that thing go out?” he snapped, making you quickly turn back and put another small log onto the pile, blowing softly into the ember to raise it up.  “And here I thought  _ you _ were the combustion expert” he muttered.

“And I thought  _ you _ were the one in charge of dealing with Cutter” the words are out of your mouth before you can thoroughly regret them, “Because from where I’m sitting, staring wordlessly at a slowly dying cellphone isn’t my idea of healthy communication” god why could you not just shut up.

“Cutter is a snake, and I’m not a fan of being bit out of recklessness”

“Well you'd better have a good excuse as to why we botched the mission”

“All objectives have been accomplished”

“Except the fact that we’ve got a pile of corpses lying outside getting bloated and a house that is definitely  _ not _ in shambles to hide all the evidence.  But you know, at least we didn’t die.  Cutter will definitely love that”

“... All named objectives are completed.  By this time tomorrow our objective’s assets will be under the control of the company.  An extra night won’t cause much grief”

“Now imagine what you would do to me if you heard me say that” there’s danger in the delight playing across his smirk as he meets your eyes.

“Very bad things” you try and swallow against the swelling in your throat but it does no good.

“Really now?  I wouldn't have guessed” you try and play it off but Kepler is already leaning forwards in his seat.

“I’d have you screaming before you could even say sorry” maybe it was the fact that the two of you were alone now which caused him to become talkative.  He was only ever super talkative, or silent as a ghost, never in between.  But he was also never talkative about sex, seeing as how it was something you both accepted wouldn’t be discussed.  Was this a good or a bad thing?

“Maybe because you never leave room for me to talk” you’re holding onto any sense of normality, not wanting to let your mind wander in deeper.  You understood where you two stood.  You definitely understood it.  So then why were you trying so hard to keep questions from spilling out?

“Ever think I just don’t value what you have to say?”

“Oh fuck you”

“Is that what you want?” you breathe out slowly through your nose, deciding the fire had enough fuel to keep itself lit long enough for you to engage your temptations.  You decide it’s probably best to start where you left off and move over a couple of feet to kneel between his legs, only taking your eyes off him as you lean down to grip his zipper with your teeth, heart already beginning to race with excitement.

His hand runs through your head and when he grips it hard enough to hurt you think he’s a bit too eager but instead he’s pulling you away from him and throwing you back onto the coffee table.  You bark out a curse as a question and look up at him only to realize something awful.

Shit.

He’s messing with you, and you walked straight into it.

“You’ve really got some issues, Jacobi” he laughs but not in a funny way.  Both your elbows are propping you up against the table as you stagger to your feet, quickly walking away so you could pace by the window and regain your confidence.  He wasn’t coming onto you, he was just fucking goading you into something.

“You’re an ass” you growl and you mean it truly.  You hate the way he looks reclining back in a dead man’s arm chair, far too pleased with himself.

“I think we should talk about this”

“Fuck off!”

“Hostile, sheesh.  How about we make this even.  I ask you something, and you can ask me something too.  Honesty is the best policy between partners after all” he’s staring daggers into you as he says  _ partners. _  He fucking knows there are questions you have for him, and you both know there is a certain amount of torture he wants to extract from you.  He can’t kill you after all, he’d never get the satisfaction from it.  You’ve got him invested and now you have to live with the consequences.

“I want to go first” there’s no way around the game, even if you wanted to get around it there’s no part of you that could hold out long enough to deny him something.

“The floor is all yours” he sweeps his hands out in a welcoming gesture.  A lightning flash behind you illuminates all the wrong parts of his face for a second, showing his true emotions.

“I want to know how many people you’ve killed” he takes a minute to process it, because it is the sort of question that comes off as innocent enough but the truth behind it holds far more insight than you’d want to admit.

You knew how many people you killed.  There was a number in your head that ticked up and up  whether you wanted it to or not.  You could understand the Kepler who would keep a count of his bodies, because that Kepler would get the rush of the kill, the high that came with being a predator.  That was something you could understand, even if you didn’t want to.

The Kepler that didn’t know his count was something dangerous.  That was where you had to draw the line.  Because it wasn’t about the number or the rush.  It was a lifestyle, and that wasn’t going to be possible to change.  As much as you love hate your job, you knew that one day you would stop and grow old, maybe have a dog, maybe have a partner, maybe even kids who you could raise better than you were.  But if this was how Kepler was going to live, that was how Warren was going to die, and you would have to choose whether or not you would go down with him too.

He seemed like he wanted to answer your question with one of his own, you could practically see it on his lips, but he remained silent as he deliberately drew out his answer.

“You think this is going to tell you something about me?” not technically a question, slick move.

“Just my perception of you.  Do you not know?”

“How do you know I won’t just lie?”

“It does you no good, because as much as it kills you, you don’t know what I’m thinking”

“I think that  _ you _ think I’m a psychopath”

“Don’t worry, I’m not much one for labels”

“Fine.  I used to keep count”

“When did you stop?”

“When I realized it was easier not to” now you’re stumped.  You knew you wouldn’t get a straight answer but you were hoping for something at least a little bit easier to work with.  “Now I think it’s my turn, correct?”

“Why haven’t you called Cutter?” you mutter, avoiding the inevitable.

“Are you in love with me?” thunder rolls down the mountain, rattling the glass behind you.

Are you in love with him?  You definitely want to fuck him, you like it best when you can pretend he has feelings for you, you feel like he’s the only one who will really ever get you.  But that doesn’t mean you love him.  Could love even apply to something this destructive?  You’re literally thinking of whether or not you want to die young in a blaze of gunfire just because it’ll be with him.  But you’ve also never felt anything as strong and powerful as being near him, as fighting to keep his interest.  You love the way he looks when trusts you, you love when his attention is all on you, and you absolutely love when the two of you get to walk in public knowing you’re the most dangerous things in miles and nobody's the wiser.

“I think you’re what I’m afraid I’ll end up becoming” you whisper, almost hoping the storm would dilute your words past him hearing them but there’s no such luck.

“That’s very narcissistic of you.  That’s not what I asked though”

“Fine.  The truth is I think I hate you.  I think I hate you so much that it doesn’t look like hate anymore” the words don’t feel like yours but they’re too true to be an improvised excuse.  Kepler leans back in his seat, appeased by your answer.  “Do you love me?”

“Yes” he says it far too happily and you know it’s a fluke but you're turning your head too quickly all the same.  He raises an eyebrow to you, poking fun, “You remind me of a good steak I had once.  It was at this nice place, had these cute little napkins-”

“Fuck you!” you yell, echoing through the empty house.  The sudden change in volume from your hushed conversation sets you back a little.

“A little touchy for someone who's not in love with me”

“Will you just quit this already and call Cutter!”

“Not until we have this little issue sorted out”

“What issue?  What is it that isn't working for you?  You call all the fucking shots, are in control of everything, and have this nice little habit of reminding me that you can kill me at any time.  I don't see how there could be that big of a problem for you!” he gets to his feet.  You can’t read his face and that makes you take a step back, the granite island counter of the kitchen meeting you.

“Oh Jacobi, You're assuming a problem means something I can't handle.  Hell, I don't care if you're in love with me, that's not my problem.  But I do like my things to work like a well oiled machine, and you my  _ friend _ , are in need of some maintenance”

“And what the fucking hell does that mean?” You spit, anger overcoming the fear.

“It means that you should get who your enemy is and who your friends are”

“And I'm guessing you're my friend now?”

“I've always been your friend”

“Could have fooled me”

“Jacobi!”he barks in your face and your whole body flinches.  When he speaks again his voice is softer than before.  “When you work at the top of your field, and when your boss puts a great deal of trust in you, he always puts a fail safe along beside you.  He puts plan B right next to plan A and then makes A think there's no way B is a thing, that B would never be the one to kill him and take over, and that B is loyal only to him because that's what he's been led to believe for years” you search his face for any evidence he's fucking with you again but there's none.

“You think Cutter made us partners so I could kill you?  Doesn't that seem like a pretty big gamble?”

“It's a gamble he knows how to play.  Did I ever tell you how I got this job?”

“... You killed your partner?”

“She found me in a shithole of a prison in South America, I'll spare the mushy details but she pulled me out, gave me a clean start, and won my obedience.  Then,  one day when a mission went wrong and she had supposedly taken some kind of tech from the company and run off, I was the one to track her down.  She ran because she knew the company was done with her.  I ran her over with my car in an alley and snapped her neck while she tried to crawl away.  Then I moved up in rank, and after a little while they sent me in to pick up you”

For the first time you feel as though Kepler isn't just an abstract figure, unable to be understood.  He was just as scared as everyone else, and that was a little comforting.

“And one day they'll ask me to kill you?”

“Assuming I don't get shot or offered a cushy retirement deal”

“There's no leaving this company, is there”

“Would you want to?”

“No”

He nods and backs off from you, putting his hands in his pockets and taking slow strides about the room, gazing out into the diminishing rain.  He stands army straight but there's an exhaustion beneath it all.

“So has everything just been you trying to convince me not to kill you?” You mutter.

“I suppose” he sighs, still watching the rain fall.  “I'm not sure there's anything I can do to make sure you won't but nobody can say I didn't try” he walks over to the coffee table and scoops up the cellphone.

“There's an easier way to do it than fucking me” you snap because you feel like he's brushing you off now.  He stops at the foot of the stairs, an arm on either wall casually like he owns the place.

“Of course there is, but if someone puts a steak in front of me I'd be a fool not to eat it.  I won't live long enough to care if it's poisoned always” He slaps the walls with both hands and grins darkly before heading up the stairs, leaving you to the remnants of the storm.


	4. Sit and Watch The Fireworks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It would have been a great idea to turn the radio on instead.

“Is it ready?” Kepler asks, breathing on his hands to warm them as he leans against the car in the driveway, the sun not even fully up yet.

“It’s more than ready” you grin, this unapologetically being your favorite part of the job.  He smiles because he knows you're happy, and had it been about something other than burning a stack of half day old corpses, you would have thought that was sweet.

“So, explain how this works” you lean beside him on the car and look out at the house, the pile of bodies just visible through the front doors.

“First, we ignite the catalyst” you offer him a small trigger contraption, made mostly of duct tape because fuck if it wasn't a reliable tool for building.  He shakes his hand at it, knowing you wanted to do the honors.  You sink your thumb hard over the only button on the remote and watch inside as a white hot magnesium flare goes up, catching the rest of your set up and blooming into a tower of green flames that lick the ceiling.

“It's green?”

“Barium salts.  Also now is when we get into the car” symmetrically you two pack away into the car, Kepler starting it up and reversing out the driveway, getting as far onto the road as possible while still being able to watch your work.  “The real trick is getting the fire hot enough to melt bone without setting off the explosives for the house.  It has to burn for ten minutes before the explosion can go off and scatter anything that's left.”

“Seems a little underwhelming”

“Anticipation is an important part of the process” you turn to him, “Though I guess you wouldn't know much about that” he grins despite himself, enjoying your wit.  “By the way did you ever call Cutter?”

“Yup” he emphasizes the pop of the P, shutting the car off to save gas.

“And how'd it go?”

“He was very pleased that we weren't dead, he was very disappointed we were behind, and in the end he said we could count on our weekend being shortened before the next assignment”

“Well that's a bit better than ordering your death” his silence let you know that you crossed a line.  It was probably a bit too soon to joke about that, all things considered.

“Do you know what you'll do when he asks it of you?” The secondary incendiary began to go off inside the house, meaning that the outer bodies had completely been incinerated and now the adipose and bone were breaking down in the bodies lying in the middle.

“I don't know.  I figure there will be a lot of circumstances to go along with it.  Maybe I’ll end up owing you money, maybe you'll sleep with my sister-”

“You don't have a sister”

“I'll get a sister”

“Just so I could fuck her?”

“Too female for your tastes?”

“I don't like imagining it.  You'd be a fucking ugly girl” you can't help but laugh.  Craning your head you can see a couple licks of bright red fire blooming from the open kitchen window.  Good, it was getting enough oxygen.

“I could marry Alana.  I’m sure she has a sister somewhere” you say as a passing thought.  He doesn't turn his head, he would never give that much interest, but you do feel his stare boring into you through the rear view mirror all the same.

“You think Alana would marry you?”

“If I wrote her a poem in binary and promised she’d never have to sleep with me I think we’d be wed by the afternoon” he laughs with his lungs, not just what's on his breath.  You pray he never knows how good it makes you feel to cause something genuine in him.

“God, I can see Cutter having a field day with that.  Hell, he'd probably marry the two of you himself and demand the firstborn is named after him”

“You think Cutter cares that much about our personal lives?”

“He doesn't ‘ _ care’ _ , he  _ indulges _ himself with it.  The man lives in a social bubble where the closest people to him are the ones most likely to kill him, if he didn't toy with the lives of his employees he'd go insane.  You know his secretary?”

“The scary Starbucks mug?”

“Scary Starb- never mind, his secretary once had this boyfriend right.  I don't remember all the details because I only half listen when he gets like this, but he starts going  _ on _ and  _ on _ about this guy and how he's such an idiot and not worth her time.  He has pictures on his phone of her desk where she put flowers he got her and little notes with date plans.  Picture after picture he just keeps going and judging everything they do.  This goes on for about a month and I think he's finally gotten bored but that was when he calls me into his office and gives me a very special assignment”

“Oh no”

“Yep, followed them to dinner, sat three rows back at the movie, waited in the street when he took her home and then went on my merry way when she invited him inside.  When I reported back, Cutter had a god damn field day and went on for hours trying to think of what they got up too.  Eventually I just had to fake an emergency phone call to leave”

“Is he in love with her?”

“That's what I thought, but the more I got into it I realized he wasn't the slightest bit interested in her, just was obsessed with knowing what went on with her life.  She eventually broke up with the boy and Cutter just sat around getting bored.  It was a shame really, I thought they were sort of cute” your brow wrinkled with confusion,

“You thought something was cute?”

“Sort of cute” he watches as you shake your head, a wide disbelieving grin on your face, “What's so funny?”

“I just can't see you being the sort of person that finds relationships cute”

“Oh so just because I'm a badass I can't like romance?”

“I don't know if I'd say badass, I think mass murdering psychopath works just fine.  And seriously?  You like romance?”

“I'm not saying I'm down for a romcom marathon,” you note he didn't correct your label of him, “I just think there's something to be appreciated when a couple is really into one another, not any of the forced crap or the dramatic shit television cooks up.  Something real like cooking dinner together or singing in the car, just enjoying their company honestly”

“I bet you're the kind of person who thinks valentines is a holiday” you scoff.

“There's nothing wrong with love!” You want to bash your head against the window and drown in the blood.   God how fucking dense could one man be, you were on the verge of storming out of the car and screaming at him.  Why couldn't he feel that way about you?  Why was is all violence and entrapment with him?  He knew your head better than you did, he had to have some idea of why this was killing you.  Hell, if he wanted to ignore your emotions he at least had to know you liked the sex better when it was sweet. He knew full well how much you wanted him, waving the casual domestic life in your face felt worse than a bullet in the gut.

He doesn't bother staring through the rear view mirror, he's just got his arms folded on the steering wheel and is peering over at you like a crowbar being gashed into the back of your skull as you pretend to inspect a smudge on the car window.

“It's not for everybody though” he adds quietly.

“And why not?!” You snap with no small amount of emotion.  You try and play it off by laughing but it just comes out slightly hysterical, “What's so terrible and dark about you that you don't think you can have that?  That you're  _ so _ different and  _ so _ special that you're above something that virtually every person on the planet wants?!”

“Jacobi, we kill people!” He sounds like he thinks you're an idiot for even asking.  Maybe you are but fuck if you care about sounding like one.

“Tons of people kill people!  Children can kill people, drunk drivers kill thousands every year, politicians sign off on orders they don't even read, robots in the sky shoot down buildings and civilians, domestic dogs kill hundreds, but that doesn't mean they all don't go home to some spouse and think how lucky they are to be alive with someone who cares about them!”

“So tell me, how is that supposed to go on speed dating?  I'm a veterinary assistant, what do you do?   Kill people for a mega corporation with a hidden agenda?  That's hot, let me have your babies!  Life doesn't work like that for our kinds of people!  People want to be the good guy, they want their little slice of life and a good batch of kids to raise to hopefully be more successful than they were.  No one wants to throw their life away for a dead end kind of guy!”

“Dammit Warren, I fucking do!” And there it is, out in the foot of space between you two, trapped within the confines of the vehicle like a vacuum.  God you can't tell if he's mad or mortified, it must look just like your face whatever emotion it is.  “I hate you and this fucking game we’re playing.  You treat me like shit and I hate myself because I still want you afterwards, every god damn time.  I hate you and I hate myself and I hate this shitty hand we've been dealt because you and I both know it doesn't have to be this way!   We've got this job that's going to end up killing us and a boss that may very well be Satan, but I can't even be upset about it because I'm so fucking caught up with you that I make myself believe it's worth it!”

He sits back in his seat, his gaze vaguely on the rising flames of the house.

“I didn't ask for you to be” he mutters, making you half think he almost feels bad.  That just pisses you off more.

“Of course you didn't!  That's not how this fucking works!”

“Well maybe I don't know how this works!” And you realize for the first time that he's not perfect.  He doesn't have all the answers, and he sure as hell didn't know what to always do.  That was why he needed you.  You've got one knee on the resting space between you two and before you give yourself time to back out, you kiss him deep and hard, his shocked breath hot on your cheek.  You don't know how many times you've kissed him or slept with him but somehow even now you feel a knot of excitement and fear in your chest like he's a stranger to you.

It felt like a bomb went off.  Not the kiss, you mean literally a bomb.  Apparently you had forgotten to keep a time check and also fail to mention to Warren that something like this would happen.  You had even prepared the perfect knock knock joke to accompany the exact moment the house exploded into an air shaking impact but it was all for not know.  During the moment of impact however you not only manage to bang your head against the roof of the car, but also get tackled backwards into the back seat, crashing all of your other limbs against equally hard surfaces and becoming wedged half between the trench in front of the seats and your partner.   You aren't a fan of what the angle does to your back.

“Dammit Jacobi I tell you every fucking time to pay some god damn attention to your work!” He screams directly and loudly in your ear, probably killing a few good brain cells.

“It's a bomb, bombs goes boom, we've been over this!” You yell right back.  A large blazing chunk of couch smacks against the front windshield of the car and rolls off over the top with a few heavy flops.

“Maybe next time it goes boom you fucking tell your superior officer!” He pushes his elbow against your throat but it barely does anything from such a weird angle.

“Oh fuck you!” You're just in the kind of mood to get your teeth handed to you anyways.  You shove him sort of.  He pushes you kind of.  With adrenaline racing and emotions already running as high as they can go in either of you, all hell breaks loose as you try and beat the shit out of each other, each motion only bringing greater discomfort to the individual.  You elbow him in the face, he knees you in the gut.  Your body seems to forget it was supposed to be hurting because you dish back whatever he gives you and God does it feel glorious to finally hit him.

Fingers grab hair, curses are flung without any thought, his body is completely pressed against you, you can feel the heat radiating off his skin, his breath on your neck as he pants while pinning one of your arms above your head.

You've both worked your way into somehow being on the actual cushions of the seat instead of trapped in the space beneath it.  He's on top of you, the weight of him threatening to crush your lungs, the grip he has on your wrist is bruising at least.  You wedge your other arm free and go straight for his throat but he catches it and puts it with the other, his elbow now against your face and pressing it to the seat so you can barely see him.

“Think you can do what I tell you to from now on?” He growls, voice dripping with intoxication.  It sends chills down your spine, half your brain completely focused on his pelvis grinding slowly against yours.  He's already hard and you can't even pretend you aren't.  “I asked you a  _ question,  _ Jacobi” it feels like he's lighting your skin on fire the way he grinds into you harder but just as slow.

“You're a fucking sadist” you manage to get out through grit teeth.  He wastes no time in immediately sinking down to your neck, sucking hard with nipping teeth right above your collarbone.  It hurts like a bitch in the sensitive spot but it's glorious too knowing that he was marking you.  There's a whine escaping your throat and you can tell it only makes him hungrier.  He grinds against you harder and finds a new place to mark on your neck.  Your legs are practically shaking with desperate arousal, just wiling more of him against you and not held back by the layers of clothes between the two of you.  You think that given a chance you'd unzip his jeans with your teeth, make him really go crazy as you take your damn sweet time.

“I'm going to fuck you till you scream regardless, so you may as well fix the attitude” he drags his bottom lip from the edge of your jaw to the shell of your ear, completely destroying you.  Hey, when you can't beat them, wreck them from the inside out.

“Yes sir” you breathe.  You can feel his breath hitch against your skin.

“Now see, that wasn’t so hard” his grin drags across you like a hot iron, exciting you and making you want to shrivel and die in equal parts. 

Then it hits you.  Shit, wait, this was the exact thing you were trying to avoid.

“W-wait stop” you mutter, finding your voice uncertain for the first time.  You were held down very legitimately and so your arms were rather useless to you.

“I didn’t think you made the rules h-”

“Warren seriously, stop” there was a sudden flash of fear that maybe he wouldn’t understand no matter what you said, but it was a wasted one because at the change of your voice he let you go and grabbed the seat to lift himself up off you, looking around the windows to see what sort of threat had to be lurking to interrupt your special moment.

“Hear something?”

“No, it’s just, well, this isn’t a good idea” you sigh, sitting up and pulling your shirt over the blooming bruise on your collar.  He let out a humorless huff like you had just said something incredibly stupid.

“What?  The car not up to your fancy?” he stood on his knees over you, making it so you had to try very hard not to brush against him as you pulled yours legs up towards you.  He got the picture that you weren’t about to just say ‘kidding’ and then rip off your clothes for him, so he separated himself from being near you entirely.  “Oh don’t tell me you just decided to get all your morals in a twist” he spat, confusion turning to frustration.  You roll your eyes sharply and open the door, stepping over a flaming piece of drywall on your way out.  “Seriously?  I thought you wanted the heart to heart chat about our feelings and bullshit” he opened up his own door and got out, crossing to meet you at the front of the car quickly.

“Let’s just go back” your eyes instinctively go to the ground and a little to the right when he confronts you.

“Are you going to make this six hour car ride incredibly awkward for the both of us?”

“Dammit Warren, I shouldn’t have started anything and I’m sorry.  Can that be it?”

“Is this about your domestic daydream a second ago?” you shoot him a burning glare that makes him clap and look up to the sky, hands barely covering a menacing smile that showed all his teeth, “Oh man!  Now that’s rich”

“ _ God _ you’re an ass” there’s another bomb being stitched together in your chest.

“I  _ asked _ if you were in love with me!” he accused, suddenly pointing at you with anger etched deep into his face.  “You said no, you said you hated me, you never said anything about wanting what I want!  That’s how I know that all of this is  _ bull _ ”

“This is exactly why I hate you!  No sensible person would want to be anywhere near you but I feel like I  _ have  _  to.  You think I wouldn’t want to be everything to you?  I’d probably have to die before I’d let you have another partner, I would absolutely threaten the life of anyone you thought worth your time to date, and I am undoubtedly the most dangerous person to your life and I  _ love _ that!  But you knew that clear as day so you can’t blame me for being a  _ little _ fucking upset that I have to watch you play with me!  ‘Oh Jacobi, let me use our aggravating boss as an excuse to fuck you in the office’, ‘Oh Jacobi, it’s so hot how we kill people together, let me use you as an outlet for whatever psychotic violence fetish I’ve got going on’, ‘Oh Jacobi, let me mess with your head by making fun of you for getting any sort of attachment towards me but then confess that I need your loyalty more than anything else’, ‘Oh  _ fucking _ Jacobi, I’m  _ fucking _ terrified you’ll kill me at any moment but I’ll go out of my way to protect you and-” you don’t get to finish because he lashes out faster than you can blink and squares away a punch straight in your face.

The shock sends you stumbling back, everything rocking around you and the opposite side of your head feeling like it just exploded.  Fuck that guy.

“Let me make one thing  _ fucking _ clear” he grabs you by the collar and slams you against the hood of the car.  It really was not as comfortable as models made it look.  “I don’t want  _ you _ , I don’t want your crazy ideas about our _ relationship _ , and I sure as hell don’t want you thinking you have any clue as to what I’m  _ feeling _ .  Because right now, I’m going to spell it out for you in a way that even you can understand.  I fuck you, because I want to.  I keep you confused and uncertain, because I want to.  And I protect you, because it’s a hell of a lot more trouble to find a new partner but you are making that a very, and I mean  _ very _ , close call”

“You sound so sure of yourself” you laugh with spite.

“That’s because I am”

“Sure this isn’t just you not knowing how this works?” There’s this moment where he’s actually taken back by his words being used against him that you’re able to lean forwards and kiss him again.  It’s all teeth and bruising force because you’re mad as hell but you may as well have something to remember before he shoots you dead and leaves you in the wreckage.

He slams you down onto the car again, hard.  You’re more ready this time though and catch him straight in the jaw with a punch that knows him back.  From there it’s less coherent.  The thing about real hand to hand fights is you’re so focused that it’s like you’re not even there.  You lose count of how many times he hits you or how hard you hit him.  You don’t remember breaking the right headlight to the car.  You certainly have no clue how residue from a charred metal pipe got between your teeth.  All you know is that by the end of however fucking long it took the two of you to finally get exhausted and seperate, you’re leaning against a tree, watching him breath heavily with both hands on the car.  There’s blood that could very well be either of yours on your hands.  If his bruises and scratches are any indicator of what your face looks like then you knew you’d be in for a rude awakening if you met up with a mirror any time soon.

“You know, if you had this much energy during our missions I wouldn’t have to come rescue you so much” a part of you feels like it should gear up for what felt like round six hundred, but instead you lean your head back and laugh.  Then you laugh harder, and before long you’re gasping for breath because Warren is laughing and his drawl is coming out a bit as he does so.

“God, we are so fucked” you grin madly, watching as your partner presses a finger to his split lip but pulls it back when it ends up hurting too much.

“Maybe if you weren’t such a fucking girl we wouldn’t be”

“I could say the same about you being an ass” now whatever post fight high you have has fully infected him because he’s smiling as broad and mad as you are.

“Touche, I’ll leave it at that.  Feel like going back yet?”

“Yeah, I want a whole bottle of aspirin and a steak as big as my face” he strides over to you, his gait broken a bit by the discomfort set in from your endeavors.  He offers you his hand and you take it without hesitation, letting him help hoist you to his feet.  He claps you on the back before moving back to the car and getting in the driver's seat.  You settle into your side as well and pull down the visor to check out your wrecked mug in the fingerprint stained mirror.

“Sorry for throwing the first punch... both times” he sighs, putting the car in reverse and getting out of the rest of the driveway.  He runs over some debris that makes you jab a bruise right in the epicenter and you can’t help but hiss.

“It’s okay.  Sorry for doing a pretty shitty impression of you”

“It takes a lifetime to master this whisky smooth tone of voice”

“Is that you’re so bad at it then?”

“At least I don’t sound like a former infomercial actor”

“Is that what you think I sound like?”

“‘If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with crippling hemorrhoids, you may be entitled to money from the national ‘oh fuck I have hemorrhoids’ fund, call immediately for free consultation’”

“Wow, so I guess it’s proof it  _ is _ possible to fail out of theater” he curses you out and you expect nothing else.  Somehow everything you were feeling and everything you’ve been wanting to scream and drill into his head since you met him had finally been dished out in one way or another.  You knew that tomorrow it’d be different.  Hell, it’d probably even be different two hours from now.  But at least now it was in the open, it wasn’t just the two of you playing an unspoken game with secret rules.  Yeah, things hadn’t exactly gone as you wanted them, but if you stayed mad over every time you didn’t get your way with Kepler you’d die of high blood pressure within a week.  As complicated and irritating as it was to try and figure out your own feelings, you knew his were a tangled mess of barbed wire that weren’t about to suddenly fall into place the way you wanted them.  It was better just to be happy that you had managed to end in a place that wasn’t going to make him burn your house while you slept tonight.  And no matter how much he denies it to you or himself, you knew there was for a fleeting half second of a moment, really only a speck of dust in the grand scheme of time, that he did something you never would have imagined he’d do with something you initiated without any of the pretense or excuse he used to explain your relationship.

There was a moment when he kissed you back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fret not, this is not the ending however that may very well be the next installment. Also I think these guys move like, one hundred feet in this entire chapter? I don't know how to feel about that.


End file.
